“Investing Without Full Knowledge Is Dangerous”

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29378, 3 December 1960, Page 11

“Investing Without Full Knowledge Is Dangerous”

(5.Z. Press Association-Copyright)

SYDNEY. December 2. The chairmen of the Sydney Stock Exchange. Mr A. H. Urquhart, today warned the public against investing or lending their money without full information. He said a recent Supreme Court judgment pointed to the dangers of lending money at the high rates of interest that had been offered in some quarters in recent times. In the judgment on Wednesday, Mr Justice Webb held that a company which had provided money on a number of occasions for a Sydney businessman was not entitled to recover the £31,733 it claimed. The Court ruled that the company was not entitled to recover the money because it had come within the description of a “moneylender” by having lent money at more than 10 per cent. At the hearing it was stated that the company was not regis-

tered as a moneylender under the Act The judgment endangered the security oi millions of pounds invested by the public in some types of loan operations, a Crown liiw Department official said today. Anyone who made a practice of lending riioney at annual interest rates exceeding 10 per cent., and was not registered as a moneylender under the State Act, could not legally recover his money, he said. It applied even to money invested through solicitors. This is also the opinion of several prominent hire-purchse company executives. They said that any person who lent money on three or four occasions would be regarded as a moneylender, and would not be entitled to recover money lent at m6re than 10 per cent, unless he was registered.